Heroes of Boston Marathon bombing tell their stories in 'Finish Line'

Monday

Mar 13, 2017 at 1:00 PMApr 4, 2017 at 7:11 AM

By Alexander Stevens, Daily News Correspondent

Actress Karen MacDonald lived on Main Street in Watertown when two bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. Her neighborhood would soon become ground zero in the hunt for the second bombing suspect.

“We were awakened in the middle of the night by a robo-call from the Watertown police,” she remembers. “It said a police incident was in progress. Lock your doors and don’t answer the door unless it’s a uniformed officer. The next day, Watertown was in lockdown. I remember looking out the window and seeing nothing. No cars. No people. Zero. It was very eerie.”

MacDonald couldn’t have known at the time that the events of those days, both tragic and heroic, would inspire a play in which she would perform. “Finish Line,” a documentary theater piece about the 2013 Boston Marathon, runs March 15-26 at the Shubert Theatre in Boston.

“A couple weeks after the bombing, all the coverage seemed to be on the terrorists,” says Joey Frangieh, who created the play with Lisa Rafferty. “Lisa and I thought we should do something that would focus on the positive. Why focus on the terrorists when we could focus on the heroes? This isn’t about the trial, and it’s certainly not about the terrorists. We don’t even mention their names in the piece.”

Frangieh and Rafferty began building a documentary theater piece. Close to 100 people were interviewed, including survivors, marathoners, first responders, journalists and clergy, as well as trauma surgeon Dr. David R. King, 1976 Marathon winner Jack Fultz and Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. The result was hours and hours of audio recordings that would become a daunting stack of transcripts.

All that material has been shaped, chiseled and chopped during a series of workshops, all leading to the world premiere at the Shubert.

Although Frangieh knew they had a compelling story, he and Rafferty often doubted whether they should tell it.

“It was still very raw and very real for the people we interviewed,” says Frangieh, adding that many of the interview sessions were quite emotional. “There came a point when we wondered whether we should even do a show like this. Are we doing the right thing? So we held a closed workshop, and we invited only the people we had interviewed. They said, unanimously, that they wanted the story to be told. Many of them thanked us for doing it. That really encouraged us to continue.”

Frangieh, who directs the show, was inspired by all the people he interviewed, but he seems to hold a special place in his heart for Erika Brannock, who lost a leg in the blast. She was the last survivor to leave the hospital, 50 days after arriving there.

“She’s a hero,” says Frangieh, who lives in Boston and graduated from Northeastern University in 2012. “She is so resilient, so strong, so kind. This event didn’t sour her on humanity. It didn’t define her. What defines her is how she came out of it. She is stronger than that Boston Marathon.”

One of the characters played by MacDonald is Liz Norden. She wasn’t even at the Marathon, but she still bears scars.

“Some of the things she had to confront were beyond imagination,” says MacDonald. “Nothing happened to her physically, but both her sons were severely injured. It’s easy to put yourself in her position: You would do anything to protect your kids, and yet there wasn’t anything she could do to help.”

But Frangieh and his cast don’t want “Finish Line” to wallow in the darkness.

“It’s a strangely positive feeling that we hope people will get when they see the show,” says MacDonald. “Sadness and grief are all in play, but I think we’re also trying to say: Look at the good that came out of it.”

Every now and then, an actor gets the chance to perform in a play that’s somehow bigger than just a piece of theater. That’s “Finish Line,” says MacDonald.

“Everyone in the cast feels it: We have a big responsibility to tell these stories honestly,” she says. “Keep it pure, keep it simple, keep it true. This is the story of a community coming together in an instant. You always get that feeling of community when you’re standing on Boylston Street during the Marathon, but what happened on that day took it to an extraordinary level.”

The Boston community continues to rally. “Finish Line” is being developed by Frangieh’s fledgling Boston Theater Company, which was headquartered in his bedroom. Then Frangieh got a call from the Boch Center. Soon Joe Spaulding, C.E.O. of the Boch Center, knew he wanted to support the effort to tell this story. He told Frangieh, “Just let us know what you need.”

Now the production has an office at the Boch Center, and the play has a home at the Shubert Theater. That means their venue went from a 50-seat conference room for a workshop production to the 1,100-seat Shubert for the world premiere.

“It’s the craziest thing,” says Frangieh.

A community responding – that sounds a lot like the message of the play.

“We see that in times of need, people come together,” says Frangieh. “Love is more powerful than hate. But why do we need a bad event in order for people to reach out and help one another? When something bad happens, we put aside our differences and we help each other. One of the characters in the play even asks the question: How can we be a more caring society?”